NYPD Cop Charged With Using Illegal Chokehold In Queens Arrest

FAR ROCKAWAY, QUEENS — An NYPD officer caught on video putting a Black man into a chokehold during an arrest Sunday in Queens is now facing criminal charges, police said.

David Afanador, who is assigned to the NYPD's 100th Precinct in Rockaway Beach, was arrested Thursday on charges of strangulation and attempted strangulation for using an illegal chokehold as his fellow officers handcuffed a man on the Rockaway Beach boardwalk.

If convicted, Afanador could spend seven years in prison, according to Queens prosecutors.

A bystander's now-viral video of the arrest shows Afanador, 39, pressing his arm into the man's neck while three other officers pin the man to the ground.

The man who was being arrested, 35-year-old Ricky Bellevue, had been heckling the police officers that morning when he asked if they were scared and reached into a trash can to grab something, according to body camera footage released by the NYPD.

The police officer wearing the body camera rushed forward and grabbed Bellevue, and the cops wrestled him to the ground.

"Stop choking him, bro!" a bystander shouted as Afanador pressed his arm into Bellevue's neck for several seconds. "He's choking him. Let him go!"

Another officer tapped Afanador on the back and appeared to pull him off Bellevue.

Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said she will not prosecute Bellevue, who has a history of mental illness, and a spokesperson said his case has been sealed.

The encounter in Far Rockaway happened against the backdrop of weeks of police brutality protests across New York City and the country, sparked by the death of George Floyd.

Last week the New York City Council passed a bill criminalizing chokeholds — which are already banned by the NYPD — as well as instances when police place their knee on a person's neck, as was the case in Floyd's death at the hands of Minneapolis police officers.

The City Council bill builds on a state law enacted days earlier that introduces criminal penalties for cases when a law enforcement officer uses a chokehold or a similar restraint that causes serious physical injury or death.

"The ink from the pen Governor Cuomo used to sign this legislation was barely dry before this officer allegedly employed the very tactic the new law was designed to prohibit," Katz said in a statement Thursday announcing the charges against Afanador. "This police officer is now a defendant and is accused of using a chokehold, a maneuver we know has been lethal."